Trader Joe’s Quick & Healthy Family Dinner

My motto is that weeknight meals must be healthy, quick and simple. Weekends — not weeknights— are for more complicated and time-consuming recipes. When I want to grab something to fit my weeknight criteria, I head to Trader Joe’s. Today I chose Sausage & Peppers with Zoodles. You will love the simplicity of making this meal, and your family will love eating it!

Quick & Healthy Family Dinner

Quick & Healthy Family Dinner: Sausage and Peppers

Ingredients

1 bag Trader Joe’s frozen Fire Roasted Peppers and Onions (also perfect for fajitas and omelettes)
1 jar Trader Joe’s Organic Tomato Basil Marinara (or pick the one without basil)
1 package Trader Joe’s Spicy Italian Chicken Sausage (or substitute Sweet for Spicy)
3 large zucchini

Don’t you love recipes with only four ingredients?

Quick & Healthy Family Dinner Ingredients

Instructions

First, I spiralized my zucchini. I’ve posted about the Spiralizer here before, but I’ll go over the basics of this AMAZING product again. I bought my Paderno World Cuisine Tri-blade Vegetable Slicer on Amazon.com. It only costs $36! I’ve been using mine for about five months, and it’s by far my favorite cooking gadget.

Quick & Healthy Family Dinner Mad Easy With The Spriralizer

This spiralizer comes with blades for three sizes of zoodles. For this recipe, I chose blade C that makes spaghetti-sized zoodles. Making zoodles with your spiralizer is quick and hassle free. First, cut off each end of your zucchini.

Instructions for quick & healthy family dinner

Next, position your zucchini in the spiralizer.

Instructions for quick & healthy family dinner

Turn the handle and watch your beautiful zoodles spill out!

Instructions for quick & healthy family dinner

Voila. A plate of zoodles. It’s so simple. No waiting for a pot of water to boil or noodles to cook. You can warm the zoodles in a skillet if you wish, but you really don’t need to because your sauce will heat them up. For this recipe, I did not heat up my zoodles, and they were great!

quick & healthy family dinner: Zoodles

Next, I chopped my sausage into bite-sized pieces.

Instructions for quick & healthy family dinner: instructions

Side note… I love my Casabella Silcone Color Coded Cutting Mats. There’s a different mat for meat, chicken, veggies and fish. So handy and a great way to avoid cross contamination during food prep.

Casabella Silcone Color Coded Cutting Mats

Okay… back to the recipe. I sprayed a generous amount of my Trader Joe’s Coconut Cooking Spray into a skillet, heated a moment and then added my chopped sausage and the fire-roasted peppers and onions. Since the sausage is precooked and the veggies are fire roasted, you only need to cook for about 12 minutes.

sauteeing quick & healthy family dinner

While that was sauteing, I poured my marinara sauce into a small saucepan. Sometimes, I make my own marinara sauce. But usually not on a weeknight.

sauce for quick & healthy family dinner

After 12 minutes, it’s all ready! Simply spoon your sausage, pepper and onion mixture onto your plate of zoodles, and then top it all with the yummy marinara sauce.

plated: quick & healthy family dinner

The entire process only took me less than 20 minutes… perfect for a weeknight meal for the family or empty nesters alike. Enjoy!

xoxo,

Andrea Tabler | TablerPartyofTwo.com

 
 

Andrea Tabler

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P.S. There is a great website devoted solely to recipes using the spiralizer. Check out Inspiralized!

 

 

Comments

  1. This is delicious! I love the Inspiralizer that you gave me! My guy loves this “spaghetti” and he usually balks with anything that is new, vegetables of most any kind, or substitutes for the real thing. So he is my gauge for the taste of anything new!

  2. Looks delicious! I’m going to try this cause I would like it but I may have to have a pot of noodles for for the man and the girls.

    • You never know! Tom eats it. He’d rather have pasta but it’s zoodles or nothing around here. 🙂

  3. Debbie Freeman says:

    I’ve got to try the spiralizer and I can’t wait for Trader Joe’s to open near me. October 15th!
    Thanks, Andrea for the inspiration!

  4. Oh, HAI! How funny. I’m making my Trader Joe’s shopping list and am totally going to make this recipe! I haven’t used a spiralizer before but have thought about purchasing one. I have a Prime account, too… Hmm.. So you’re saying it’s worth the 36 beans? Also haven’t tried the fire roasted veggies… I’d probably use a veggie sausage/veggie meatballs, but I’m pretty sure I still have a jar of that marinara in the cupboard. Thanks for this!

    Oh, and stopping in from SITS today. Hope you’re enjoying your weekend!

    • I’m saying it’s worth MORE than 36 beans. 🙂 But that’s mostly because I haven’t been eating much pasta in the last few years and I’m SO enjoying all my faves made with zoodles. I think you’d love it! I did stop by you blog–love it! Thanks for visiting mine.